someone as fortunate as i - fic recap

[onceand_forall]

my first fic of 2021, babbbbbbbey! actually this is not my first fic of this year, as in this is not the first fic i worked on this year. i actually finished this back up in december (as did my beta, thanks jen), but between the holidays, birthdays (go go go capricorns), and moving across the country, i figured it would be best to post this after things had settled down a bit.

it's also not the first fic i've even posted to ao3 this year. lol. but the other fic hasn't been revealed yet as it's a part of a big bang. you can check out that fic recap here. (the link will work when it goes up LOL)

so, semantics aside, this osaaka baby au is my first fic of the year!

THE BACKGROUND

haikyuu kind of blindsided me this year. i first got into haikyuu back in jan 2015 (basing off tumblr, where i was SUPER active back in the day.) and i used to watch / read everything available before posting about it on tumblr (younger me was very anal about spoilers), and so i can safely assume i've been into haikyuu since late 2014.

so seven years ago. what the fuck.

anyway, hq has always been somewhat on my radar (even if my super active hq fandom days died out around 2017/2018) and then this summer oikawa... went 3D? that was a lot and it was also so much fun. and then it was november and i literally hyper-fixated again. i read the entire manga (sans time skip. okay okay so not sans time skip i lit stopped reading after the nekoma match) and just. i fell back in love.

hq was even better than i remembered and there were so many new characters and new dynamics and new opportunities !!!!!!!!!

and then i fell into rarepair hell.

for clarification, i've always been into hq rarepairs. kenhina has ALWAYS been my no1 ship and it seems that certain things (my love for oikawa tooru, kenhina supremacy) just do not change. life is cool like that.

and god... do i lov hq setters.

i'm not exactly sure what drew me to osaaka-- haha wait that's a lie. osaaka is so good because of a combination of things

1. miya osamu and miya atsumu. GOD do i love good sibling dynamics
2. GOD DO I LOVE AKAASHI
3. their ship is very new and yet still so comforting
4. there is so much left to explore with their dynamic, and so much that can be created on your own bc of the lack of canon content. idk, it just feels like osaaka is fresh and new and unknowable and i really like that

and so here we are... with baby fic.

i originally started this idea with atsukita baby. i am really, really fond of atsukita and in my head i have two ways atsukita happens

1. they get together in hs (probably after kita graduates or right after atsumu graduates) and they are in BIG LUV and they know that they have found their person and that is that <3 they are the type of hs sweethearts that you see on fb bc they posted their engagement photos when they are 20 and they make u feel really old for also being 20 and being proud of urself for making cup ramen fancy read: with an egg and some veggies
2. alt, they both pine an INTENSE amount over each other for years because they know their relationship will have to be long-distance and difficult and they both think the other person deserves better that what they have to offer... it's mutual pining at its finest.

and this idea was spurred by the first one. i loveeeeee baby fics and it seems that rice quartet doesn't have many fics on that idea. and i was like :^) okay here i come! and i thought so so so much about atsukita fam that i won't quite get into, but a lot of the background made itself known in this fic. that was not planned. at all. but it fit so i kept it in!

one day, i want to write waaaaay more about atsukita + sachi. i really want to write a fic about msby team finding out about kita + sachi (spoilers: hinata knows he was invited to the wedding. and the rest of the team thinks he's a bachelor with an intense love for a cat named sachi. it's the type of relationship that is SO established that atsumu fails to tell people about it. lol)

but anyway, back to SAFAI. that's a little acronym i just made up on the spot. idk if it will stick.

THEMES

i started out with the intention of making SAFAI incredibly, incredibly lowkey. i didn't even have an outline (that changed after the first 5k) and kind of just went with the flow. but i think i kept that light-heartedness throughout the fic.

SAFAI is supposed to be a fun, loving story that doesn't have any conflict and is just there to make you smile. and i think i did that really well.

(by the final time i was editing i was so BORED with the fic, but i think that's just bc i read it like five times in an hour and knew it word by word at that point.)

my outline was very cute cute cute! and then when i was writing. AND THEN WHEN I WAS WRITING

Atsumu happened.



this tweet is about atsumu... because he just kept SHOWING UP! and then i just let him get in.

and so another one of the themes that showed up is the theme of brotherhood / siblings. and what it means to grow up and be different from your sibling but also the exact same. because osamu and atsumu know each other so well, are each other's best friends. but they are grown up now. and live two different lives. and how their lives are separate yet still completely intertwined. so yeah :) a loving sibling relationship :) this shows up a lot through the motif of mirrors-- if i were to go back and do a rewrite of this, i would include more scenes with mirrors.

and ofc, the ongoing theme of work and overwork. idk why but osaaka just.. is so easy to use as a vehicle to talk about burn out and stress and overwork. akaashi really is the one that's the easiest to write getting overwhelmed / overworked. idk why, but he just fits that too easily.

and so you have our three themes: loving domestic bliss, changing yet stable relationships between adult siblings, and stress/overwork and how to overcome it.

an overall good time :^)

SCENE INSPOS

write what you know - someone famous

i pull a lot from real life when i write and so here are some certain scenes that were inspired by my actual life.

Sachi knows the difference between Atsumu and Osamu. At her first birthday party, she had thrown a fit when she had called for her dad and Osamu had picked her up and not Atsumu, making Atsumu laugh so much he cried. Keiji has a video on his phone of her looking between the two of them with confusion written all over her face. She eventually realized Osamu was the one holding her. They were twins, sure, but Sachi knew which one was her father and which one was the one pretending to be her father.

not so much from irl but it is based off of this video

Osamu nods. But before he does that, he knows her dads are probably waiting for a morning update. “Hey, Sachi,” he says leaning into her space. He pokes her gently on her arm before running his hand over her stomach in light, butterfly touches. She giggles. “Want to take a picture?”

my cousin is one of those people who is SUPER into taking photos of her baby and posting them everywhere... to the point where her toddler knows to smile when u take out a phone. it's not that bad in this fic, but sachi def knows how to pose :)

Osamu gets home a bit later than he had meant to. He had sent Keiji a text the moment he realized he was going to have to stay later, but he wasn’t sure if Keiji read it. Keiji only turns on his read receipts when he’s trying to be petty, so Osamu satisfies himself with the Delivered message under his text.

in which keiji is me, actually. teehee.

Technically, Keiji doesn’t have it off. But he woke up in the middle of a night with a blistering migraine and after Osamu had shoved him half of a banana (Because Osamu and his younger days of getting way too drunk with important things to do the next day knows that the only thing worse than a horrible hangover is taking medication on an empty stomach.) a glass of water, and some pain meds, decided to call in sick.

i havVEVEVEVEVE chORINIC MigRAINES <3 <3 haha #chronicpainlyfe and i have also been super hungover and taken pain meds on an empty stomach and it was the worst pain in the world <3 learn from me so u never have to do that

(Osamu and Atsumu are identical, aside from Atsumu’s bleached hair and their slightly different eye colors. Sometimes, when Osamu has a hat on and is dressed in clothes that Atsumu would be likely to wear, he gets stopped and asked for an autograph, a photo. It doesn’t happen often, but the first time it did, Osamu was so surprised he couldn’t even tell the ten year old boy he had the wrong Miya. Atsumu thought it was hilarious, and then apologized for it even happening in the first place, as if Atsumu could control something like that.)

not so much from irl again, but i did have an idea to write a 5+1 about the twins getting confused for each other. but it's only remained an idea and i think it's funny in the context of this fic

PERSONAL FAV LINES

my favorite lines... presented here with no context other than my sheer adoration for them.

Atsumu and Osamu both were not the best when sharing their feelings. Atsumu pretended like he was, like he wore his heart on his sleeve and blurted out his emotions as they came. But in reality, he used those outbursts as a way to cover what he was truly feeling. Osamu was the opposite. He would sit there and insist and insist and insist everything was fine until it all became too much and he burst with all of emotions: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And Atsumu had done exactly that. To the general public, Miya Atsumu was the starting setter and number 13 on the MSBY Black Jackals, a member of the Japanese Olympic Volleyball team. A flirty, charismatic man who always played up the fanservice, was frequently rumored to be dating at least a handful of other celebrities, and whose face was almost on every Nike billboard in the country.

And back home he was Miya Atsumu, Osamu’s annoying older twin, one of two successful sons, a good husband to the rice farmer he pined a ridiculous amount over in high school, a father to one smiley and intensely smart toddler and three cats who spent the majority of their day laying in sun patches. Not the same amount of accolades, but the same Miya Atsumu.

Falling in love with Keiji was simple. It was like that was how the world was supposed to be, presenting another fact of the universe for Osamu to take and implicitly understand.

“Love you,” Atsumu says. “You have to say it back now.”

But there was something about growing up that wasn’t competitive anymore.

LINES I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT

these are lines that may have more thought put behind them than u might think.........

“We’re going to be there very soon to pick you up,” Kita says. He says his words slowly, but doesn’t use any baby talk. His words are calm and soothing and Sachi nods in understanding.

as i talked about earlier, i have put a lot of thought into atsukita parenting and what that means for themselves, their kids, and their parenting styles. they are good dads (duh), but there are also some niche things i came up with. one of them is that kita never speaks to sachi in baby talk. he just speaks to her with love and adoration and smaller words that are easier for her to digest, but never baby talk! atsumu tho

And then it’s just Atsumu and Osamu on the phone. Sachi somehow messed around with the buttons while Keiji took her away and turned the video call into a regular phone call. Not that Osamu is complaining, because face-to-face communication with his brother seems to be a bit too much to handle at the moment.

so i wrote this scene in multiple sittings which MEANS that i forgot they were on a video call. so i wrote half the scene as a video call and the other half as a regular phone call... it was a pain to edit and for simplicity's sake, i just made the entire thing a phone call (even though it started off as a video call) ugh that was annoying.

Osamu gasps, pretending to be surprised. "I want a Keiji kiss too." Osamu looks at Sachi and then is a moment of understanding that passes through them. Osamu presses their faces together so they are cheek to cheek. Then they both look at Keiji, pouting.

i actually just think that osamu and sachi r the cutest things ever and keiji is Incredibly weak. nothing more to add <3

Osamu is going to be late for work and it’s entirely Atsumu’s fault.

WE LOVE BLAMING THE SIBLINGS !!! what is a good sibling dynamic without a bit of petty blaming? contrasts the heart-to-heart they had a bit earlier and brings their relationship back to being really silly :^)

THE TWEETS

i tweeted a lot about this fic while i was writing it! so here are most of the tweets from my twt.













thank u for coming to my ted talk

OVERALL

man, this fic was a lot of fun and a good starting point for 2021. i enjoyed writing every bit of this and im so excited to write more self-indulgent fic this year!

if you've made it this far, tysm for reading! i hope my thoughts / insights were enjoyable.

mil gracias,
once

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